Holocaust Essay

2315 words - 10 pages

Can you imagine having no rights to your own body? How about being cut open with no sedatives or freezing to death in a tank of ice water? Most of the Holocaust victims who were test subjects in the Nazi medical experiments endured those things. According to Baruch C. Cohen’s “The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments,” during the Nuremberg trials after World War II, twenty doctors were convicted and charged with “War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity...revealed evidence of sadistic human experiments conducted at the Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps” (15). The Nuremberg trials brought fourth the attention to the ethics of the doctors while ...view middle of the document...

The Sterilization Law made sure people suffering from any genetic illness were forced into being sterilized. So basically if you were not to the liking of the Nazis then you were not allowed to have offspring. The Nuremberg Laws were health regulations the Jewish people had to subject themselves to. Lastly, Hitler started issuing orders to kill anyone who was incurably sick, by euthanasia. This was the start of the extermination of the non-German people.
While some doctors were performing the three ways of obtaining “racial cleansing”, most of the doctors at the different concentration camps started performing their own experiments. Each torturous act was characterized by many different features: “1. persons were forced to become subjects in very dangerous studies against their will” (Cohen 3), meaning the inmates did not have to give the doctors consent in order for them to run tests on them. “2. nearly all subjects endured incredible suffering, mutilation, and indescribable pain” (Cohen 3). The Nazi doctors refused to give the inmates any type of medication or sedative, because they wanted the inmates to suffer. Even though the Nazi doctors tried to say that it was all “research” they had one goal in mind, which leads to “3. the experiments often were deliberately designed to terminate in a fatal outcome for their victims” (Cohen 3). This shows that the Nazis were being unethical and they were going against a big part of the Hippocratic oath, “to do no harm”.
The Nazi experiments were put into three different categories: “Medico-Military Research; Miscellaneous, Ad Hoc Experiments; and Racially Motivated Experiments” (Cohen 3). The Medico-Military experiments were said to be for military and medical purposes, because they were necessary for the military to gain more knowledge of medical issues during wars. The Nazis also tried to justify themselves by saying that the inmates were going to die anyways, so the experiments did not really make a difference.
One of the main experiments the Nazis performed on the male inmates was the hypothermia experiment. They were conducted on men, because the Nazis wanted to see the best way to get to their German soldiers who would freeze to death in the Eastern Front. This experiment was primarily conducted at Dachau, under the supervision of Dr. Weltz and his assistant, Dr. Sigmund Rascher (Bekier 4). This medical experiment was publicized at a medical conference in 1942 titled “Medical Problems Arising from Sea and Winter”. The freezing experiment was broken up into two different parts. They first wanted to see how long it would take to lower the bodies temperature to the point of death and then they wanted to find the best way to resuscitate the victim. In order to freeze the victims the Nazis would put the victim in an icy tank of water for up to eight hours at a time (Bekier 4). Or another method would be to put the victim outside naked and strap them onto a stretcher “in sub-zero temperatures for...

Other Papers Like Holocaust

969 words - 4 pages
"Night" by Elie Wiesel is a terrifying account of the Holocaust during World War II. Throughout this book we see a young Jewish boy's life turned upside down from his peaceful ways. The author explores how dangerous times break all social ties, leaving everyone to fight for themselves. He also shows how one's survival may be linked to faith and family.
The novel starts out in a small highly Jewish populated Hungarian town named Sighet. The

787 words - 4 pages
HOLOCAUST
STARTED: January 30th 1933
ENDED: May 8th 1945.
Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led…5 million Jews murdered to the death camps,6,000,000 Jewish people (1.5 million of these being children) were murdered.
The Holocaust was the most corrupted time in the history well besides the Civil War. Hitler was sinful, manipulative, bitter man in the world. Hitler did what he did because he had

1770 words - 8 pages
holocaust tells of what happened to his parents. Menachem Daum talks about how his mother lost her faith. Fela Nussbaum Daum tells her son how she had a strong faith in God as she was pulling into Auschwitz. She had arrived with her sister and an infant son. To save her life, she would have to give up her child instead of going into the gas chambers. Giving up her child made her lose her complete faith in humanity and she never recovered from

1036 words - 5 pages
Fascism in Germany
The Holocaust was the mass murder or genocide of Jewish people, homosexuals, gypsies, blacks, and other minority groups. When the Holocaust is brought up, the most common question I’ve heard is “how did the German people get away with this, and why did anyone support them?” By the time the holocaust took place, a precedent to anti-Semitism was already historically present. In the late 19th century and early 20th century

572 words - 3 pages
interviews with those who have survived whichever war or event I’m looking up. A fresh perspective from someone who has lived through a war can sometimes make you see things much differently and open your mind up to different emotions and feelings. While I was in an advanced composition class I was told to pick any topic within the Holocaust to write a paper up to twelve pages. With almost unlimited resources and time it seems like it would be easy to

1428 words - 6 pages
Wiesel’s Changes of Faith
The Holocaust brought about many hardships and created severe adversity for its victims that may have created experiences ultimately too traumatic that transformed their lives for years to come, either through starvation and labor in the concentration camps or execution and incineration in the extermination camps. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel tells the story of himself as a young Jewish boy born in

348 words - 2 pages
sterilization law enacted. In 1924 the Supreme Court concurred "that Carrie Buck is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization" (unbelievable!)
The philosophical roots of the holocaust can be traced to American scientists because an author stated that eugenic

1866 words - 8 pages
reputation and money; who risked his own life in order to save lives of a people deemed his enemy is the perfect example of what an ethical leader is. A man, laden with faults and bad luck, rose above what was normal and did what was right.
Oskar Schindler, recognizing the undeniable and horrific intentions of the Nazi Party, rebelled against the appalling acts that the Nazis committed during the Holocaust of World War II. He donated his entire

565 words - 3 pages
the paintings are unknown, it has been speculated that the bodies were those of victims murdered and tortured by the Nazis and possibly even victims of the Holocaust. The question is whether or not it is ethical to use such a book, knowing the likely possibility of whom the images were depicted after, because of the phenomenal work that it contains. Yes, it is indeed ethical because it is important to focus on the works of the man rather than the

524 words - 3 pages
One Small Act by Jennifer Arnold
A wise man once said ‘’ Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, and fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.’’ It tells the story of Chris Mburu, a child from Kenya, and how his life was changed by a woman named Hilde Beck. Hilde Beck is an 87 year old survivor of the holocaust her parents were

591 words - 3 pages
their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it is the deadliest conflict in human history,[1] resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities.
Although Japan was already at war with

Related Essays

2103 words - 9 pages
Holocaust Midterm
Dana Bob
Mercy College
1. Explain the origins and development of modern anti-Semitism
Throughout history the Jewish community has been subject to a violent history which can be traced as far back as their expulsion from Carthage in 250 C.E. For centuries, Jews have endured slavery, land confiscations, massacres, pogroms, blood baths, mass arrests, public torture, banishments, inquisition, slaughter, mass murders and

915 words - 4 pages
The Holocaust is a great tragedy that happened during World War II. One of the main concentration camps was Auschwitz this is the largest of the Nazi death camps, the camps address is Więźniów Oświęcimia 20, 32-603 Gmina Oświęcim, Poland. Auschwitz was located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, it’s an area that Nazi Germany took control of, in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland

1086 words - 5 pages
Concentration Camps during The Holocaust
A concentration camp is where prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and political prisoners are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions, or place or situation characterized by extremely harsh conditions. The first concentration camps were established in 1933 for confinement of opponents of the Nazi Party. The supposed opposition soon included all Jews, Gypsies, and certain other groups. By

521 words - 3 pages
"Men to the left! Women to the right!" (page 27). At the time of WWII, the Holocaust involves the mass murder of millions of Jews. During this dark time, Jews are forced to work at harsh concentration camps and his chance of surviving the camps is very small. Elie Wiesel lives to tell his horrifying experiences during this time, meanwhile his faith, mankind, and his responsibility to his father struggles to thrive.
As time goes on during the